I'm in the process of developing a new plugin which will run on the core, and use libPurple to present an instant messaging client to the users inside the house. This is one of many lab feasibility tests to see what functionality can be used on a smart home system such as this.

This will be able to support the major IM networks that libPurple will support (I am deliberately cutting out group chatting features for now, because of UI concerns, this system is meant to answer quick messages.)

The goal here is that this is available to all orbiters in the house, and depending on which family member is set as the user for an orbiter, they get their IM messages to all of those orbiters. If an orbiter has its ignore button pressed, instant messages will not be sent to that screen (handy for on-screen orbiters whilst watching a movie, so you can take it on your hand-held orbiter instead...)

I am laying out the initial UI harness so that I can start developing the plugin, but you can see a screenshot of what i'm sketching, here:

still very primitive, but hopefully you get the idea... with UI2, I am taking advantage of the alpha compositing as much as I can..and I am building a new keyboard that has each key-cap alpha-channeled down to 30, so that it will blend through...